Tricking the Giant: The Hag’s Tasks

When we reach the glass mountain, we’re suddenly faced with challenges that we need to conquer. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom go back to the story of the drummer as the hag was giving him tasks. In each of the tasks, he is ready to give up until a woman comes along and helps him. Bill and Tom relate this to the presidential candidates and their respective campaigns, reiterating the importance of having a vision and delivering the vision right. They also discuss spacing the message in such a way that it becomes a possibility, not merely an idea to be forgotten.

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I’m going to build the wall.



I have certainty, I’m going to build the wall. In fact, the wall is being built. There have been several hundred miles already being built. Meanwhile, it’s not in alignment with, but it does speak to certainty. What’s on my mind is, “I need somebody to simplify this government thing for me.” I don’t want to look at the complexity of, “It takes $1 million per mile to rebuild a highway infrastructure.” I don’t want to think about how big $1 million is to build one mile. I want to go faster.

They don’t want to think in a complex way and therefore they’re advocating it. When the government gets in trouble, they advocate decision-making to people that don’t make decisions. Look at Brexit. The whole problem with Brexit is that you don’t allow people to vote on something they know nothing about. It was the worst gamble that David Cameron ever made. They’re going to vote it down and it’s going to shut the Conservatives up. “No, I saw what happened.”

They’re facing a crisis as they’re on the threshold of Brexit.

They are. Are they going to do a hard wall? No, we’re not doing a hard wall. The worst thing Northern Ireland could do is go into, “We’re building a hard wall again.” They spent decades and the bloodshed over a damn wall. Donald Trump went there and said, “Build a wall.” It’s like, “That’s what the wall does.” You don’t want that separation.

People will choose certainty over the details of truth and explanation. The fact-checkers are doomed, aren’t they?

Yeah. The fact-checkers are doomed unless it’s framed in a way that’s in alignment with the belief structure that they’re holding. You have to frame a fact in alignment with the belief structure that’s going to work. Designated driver, isn’t that a good concept? It was made up out of nothing. They had the TV writers put in into every show in order for people to start using it as a term. “I’m the designated driver. This is what the designated driver does.” It was on Friends a dozen times at least. The term designated driver never existed before somebody came up with the term. Somebody created belief around it. Somebody created a good reason why, safety for your friends. Protection to get home. Don’t let your friends drive drunk because they’re your friends. Have a designated driver if someone’s drunk. Give him a cab. Here’s how you do it, walk up to the cab and stick your friend in there. It’s inconvenient for them to come back and get their car tomorrow morning. Who cares? They’re drunk in that cab or in the Uber. When the politicians go out there, their primary focus is to stay clean on messages that land and don’t get caught into an explanation. Don’t get caught into, “How’s this thing going to work?” The person hasn’t created their vote yet. It’s not about figuring things out, it’s “Inspiring people towards.”

He was stuck because as he was emptying the lake. There’s no way he was going to empty the lake, let alone with a thimble. It wasn’t until he gave up and became vulnerable. It wasn’t until he went into the visionary or the dream state of sleep. The woman that came out and fed him and gave him something to drink was a part of that. She said, “These things can be done easily. Put your head in my lap, take a nap.”



In other words, think about this thing, imagine, envision it being done, and watch what happens. He goes to sleep and she turns her ring, fish out, and they all jumped up in the line. Water out and it does that. That’s all, whether it’s President Donald Trump or any of the candidates do, is set the vision. There’s always going to be somebody that’s going to pick on the vision. The Republicans said no to Obamacare, stalled him for a year. He had the votes; within 100 days he could have passed Obamacare. He had the votes. They had the plan. They’re ready to go pass the damn thing, pass it.

That’s what they did. They allowed the Republicans to talk them into the weeds, “How about this? How we’re going to handle this,” because they wanted it to be inclusive. They wanted the whole country to be involved in it. Little did the Democrats know is the pact that Republicans made is resist everything he does for four years. That was the pact that they made. Once they discovered it a year in, the Democrats sometimes are a little slow on this one. They’re obstructionist, you may want to not listen to them. You’ve got to figure out a way around this because they’re obstructing it. Start painting them as the party with no ideas, which is where they are is the party with no ideas. There’s a party called the Republican Party. This is not having any new ideas. There are no new ideas over there. They’re still doing trickle down for God’s sake.

They want things to return to the way things were. That’s pretty much it, right?

Yeah. They want to keep the status quo of funding and tax rates and those kinds of things. They don’t want to move things around. If they do, they want to move the centerline, which they’ve done a great job from their perspective with the courts. They’ve moved the entire court to the right. All of a sudden, it pushes the moderate people out. These people are moderate on those things and they’re sitting on the fringe. It’s like, “Not good.”

The next thing is the drummer has to wake up the next day in our story. He’s got to face the hag because she’s already awake, like our thoughts are already awake. My thoughts were already awake this morning. When I woke up and opened my eyes. They were already there. The hag was waiting for me. Every morning, the hag is waiting and those are your beliefs thoughts that are going like, “Watch this, do things the same,” that’s the big hag that you’ve got in your voice.

Why? Everyone’s got that voice, “Do things the same, keep things the way they are. Do things that are easiest, do things that are familiar.” They don’t say, “Swing for the front fence.” The hag doesn’t say that unless you’re in Richard Branson’s brain. Richard Branson says, “I want to make an airline out of nothing. I’ve got some money. I’m going to make an airline. I want to fly to people to space.” Virgin Galactic. “I’m going to fly people to space, I’m going to make some money at it.” That’s visionary thinking.

He sold the sizzle and did not ever provide the actual steak.



Here’s what the drummer does, the drummer puts his head in his hands and says, “Why did I do this? Why am I here? Where is the princess that I’m supposed to save? This hag is kicking my butt right now.” I don’t know how to get out of this because my integrity is so high. I’m not going to leave this mountain but I am going to have a moment of contemplation of, “Why’d I come here again? It was to save myself.” It was to save the feminine. It was to go on a worthy quest. As he’s sitting there and contemplating this, another woman comes out of the hut.

A different one this time?

A different one. She comes out of the hut and she says, “What do you need? What are you requesting?” He goes, “I’m tired and hungry. I need some rest and food.” She goes, “Here’s this basket of food and wine to drink. Here is something to restore your sustenance. Take a nap, put your head in my lap.” What would you do?

It sounds pretty good.

All of the candidates are not managing that timing well. They’ve got to rest and then engage. Eat, restore and then engage. They’re not managing the media cycle. They’re not managing the impact of messaging over time. Messaging over time is something that Donald Trump masters. Even bad messaging is good messaging in his world. I mentioned Alabama. I’m going to deny that I mentioned that Alabama was a part of this. The weather service says, “No, Alabama was never mentioned and there’s no threat.” It’s like, “We didn’t mention that.” He’s going like, “Sizzle opportunity. You wouldn’t know about these meetings. They were secret meetings. None of you were there.”

Here’s the initial chart and even the proof is no help. It’s caught an obvious lie about a category 5 hurricane, but it’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that he is managing the hag well. Once the drummer wakes up from the nap, the woman takes her wing and says, “Forest down.” She turns the ring and the whole forest falls down. She turns the ring again, “Forest stack.” All of a sudden, these different piles of forest and stacks of wood spread out all over where the forest was.

He promises things that don’t have the practicality or reality and is not in alignment with the financial security or best interest of the nation. He doesn’t necessarily know how to work hard at the beginning, he promises, “I have to get it done,” with no vision. He never takes his nap in the lap of a beautiful woman. He’s always going to bed with a different form of hag every night and that all he’s got to do is go charm somebody else. He’s stuck, with not having that strength of relationship building, other than the sizzle to steak and the smell of something being tasty and it’s not.

He’s working there and he puts his hand and he’s helpless, it’s lunchtime. He’s hungry. He needs rest, food, and something to drink. As soon as he’s sitting there going like, “Why did I come on this journey?” The initial woman that he met at the beginning of this story comes out of the hut, this was the princess he was looking for. The other two were her sisters that came out. At the beginning of the story, all three of them were being trapped by the hag, but now he’s meeting the woman that he had met the beginning of our story.

She says to him, “Do you need anything right now from me? Maybe I can help you because? He goes, “This is impossible. I’ve been trying to get up here to find you. I’ve been dealing with the hag.” She goes, “I told you it’s going to be difficult, but to see you here, it’s been wonderful.”

He gets some connection and some reassurance right there, but he also says, “I’m hungry and I need something to drink, I’m thirsty and I’m tired, I’ve been working my butt on it, but look how far I got. I haven’t been able to get it across the finish line.” She says, “Here’s some food. Here’s something to drink, put your head in my lap, take a nap. These things could be done easier than you think.” What would you do? I’m taking a nap.

I agree with that.

The candidates, when doing an interview, they need to space their communication. They need to space and give people a chance to rest. Don’t try to fit every word into an interview but make the words that you say count. Marianne Williamson, she makes this mistake all the time. She puts too many words and does not give the listener a chance to rest. What happens is her message does not fully stick. It becomes interesting, but not believable. You’ve got to get the limbic part of the person’s brain to hold on to it as a certainty, not to keep it up in the front part of the brain as an idea.

Why do we, as the United States, not have a Department of Peace when we have a Department of Defense? People will say, “It’s the State Department.” That’s not a Department of Peace. That is a device of communication. That’s not a department that advocates peace per se, advocates where the defense spending is going to go. If we’re spending on peace, we’re employing a lot of people as emissaries. We’re enrolling people into why our Democratic voice is all count and work.

Do we want to change the world and have more people do this model versus a communist model or China model or an authoritarian model? The answer is yeah, if you get the right giant to carry you, you want that giant to carry you. How are you going to do that? Is that message going to stick at the Department of Peace? Not much you give people a chance to believe it and to see it as true and spell it out a little more clearly the way I did it. It’s a good and essential idea that if we want democracy to grow and we want to create better trade partners to get better trade deals, to create greater foreign purchasing power. Wouldn’t it be great If we were able to manage that kind of worldwide communication? It would make a different nation and a lot of people would be employed in better drops.

The donors have some hag energy to them because they’ll say, “I’m going to donate something. There’s nothing I’m expected back from this, but these policies and these judges I will.” There is a hag deal with the donors and there is a relationship between the wealth and the donors also. When the hag gets to spend the money the way the hag wants to, that’s called Citizens United, that’s what that is. That’s the hag spending its own money, without relationship to the country or relationship to the voters. That’s what happened with Citizens United, it was a hag experience of giving the people the hag in charge of the way money spent in politics, and that’s got to change. You would never think that’s such a mythic tale would have such a relevant present-day impact on our political discourse, but this is what’s happening.



It’s quite a journey we’re going on and I know there’s another part of it coming up in our next episode. One of the things that I wonder and if I can pull this into something that is happening right now is that you have all these candidates competing, all these different drummers trying to drum and trick the giant and get where they need to go get to the top. I see Joe Biden who is the frontrunner still. He seems to have gotten at least up the glass mountain rather easily without having to do a whole lot of work. He’s the presumptive front runner and he is the beneficiary of belief by a lot of the population.

That’s it right there, he’s in the belief position right now. The percentages in his direction are in the belief part of it. The problem that the other candidates are going to have is the believability that they can get their plans done. Elizabeth Warren’s smartness is going to get in her way, she’s almost too smart. She has to stay on vision rather than on smartness and she’s going to do better. Bernie Sanders has been consistent on vision and he’s been consistent from an independent place, which is a good thing for him. If he was a Democrat and saying these things rather than being an independent and saying these things. He seen the problems from the money, he sees the problems, he sees them and so does Elizabeth Warren and some of the other ones definitely see the problem.

They all struggle with tricking the giant into carrying them. The media giant is exhausted about carrying Donald Trump, they’ll take any way not to carry him anymore. Right now, they’re a little handcuffed to carrying him because it’s the President, they have to carry and point out. I’m going to go with my point of view that he used a Sharpie on a weather map, whether he did it or just to make his statement true versus having the vulnerability of overstating. He overstated and he doesn’t know as a human being doesn’t know how to admit to a mistake, he doesn’t.

No, because that to him is weak.

He sees it as weak and he has a lot of evidence that there is some weakness to admitting mistakes. At the same time, when you have enough money, you can make enough mistakes to keep making mistakes and throw money to clean it up, “I’ll throw money and they’ll clean up. Let’s deal with this. Let’s do that.” Meanwhile, there are some difficult things that are coming his way that, regrettably, he’ll never know about. His kids and grandkids will. They’ll observe that you don’t want to mess with the giant because the giant will eventually eat you. That’s what media is starting to do right now, eat him alive.

What I wonder and it’s going to be interesting to go on this journey that we’re going to be talking about these things and Monday morning quarterbacking them. All this to see if the beliefs out there about Joe Biden are enough to carry him the distance in spite of, what are inevitably going to be more missteps and gaffes and if he doesn’t get caught in explanation again or consistently. We’ve seen the polls move. Kamala Harris went up surging after that debate and was up in number two in some polls. I don’t know if she cracked double digits, but she was pretty high there and then she came right back to where she was.

You’ve seen some people couldn’t correct the 1% threshold and that was one of the tests to see who could get on the next debate stage. Finally, the next debate is going to be only ten of them and one night. We’re not going to have two nights of debates. I see Pete Buttigieg like steady Eddie, the same percentage, not stepped on any land mines, but he hasn’t had the breakout moment. You wonder if anybody is going to be able to bring new blood to the point where the voters overall believe they’re going to lead this country. What is needed? Is it going to be this knee-jerk reaction to Donald Trump and everybody looking for certainty and safety in Joe Biden? That’s what it feels like.

It’s leaning towards the certainty and safety with Joe Biden and the trust that Joe Biden could be on the stage. It’ll be evident about how little Donald Trump knows in the face of what Joe Biden does. The problem is that Joe Biden is going to struggle with being concise. He’s an interpersonal communicator. You can call him sleepy Joe, you can call him any name you want, the problem is that he has got to be known as leader Joe. He’s got to be known as inspirational Joe. He’s got to be known as integrity Joe and he can run on all of those words and craft messages. If he’s reading, there are some specific messages that I would recommend. As for all the candidates, they can take what they would like to stand for and craft them into messages that are going to communicate the level of connection that the voter needs to hear and creates that next level of buy-in. That buy-in is significant because if you’re not dealing with the hag and the giants it will tend not to go so well.

That’s a big part of it and we could take a look at that next episode about, once they get down, they’ve got to remember the core story that brought them there. This next part of the story has to do with forgetfulness. I forgot what Kamala Harris said. I forgot what Joe Biden said. I forgot what President Donald Trump said. People that heard the grab the genitals thing, there are already twenty things that are worse than that. They can’t even remember the story. It’s like all they’re doing is remembering the faint vision of him being inspirational.

Same with Ronald Reagan. What did Ronald Reagan do that Bill Clinton had to do to clean up the economy, coming back off of Ronald Reagan? What did Barack Obama have to do to clean up the economy after President George Bush? Is it the Democrats have to keep cleaning up the mess that the Republicans make inside the environment and by not creating the level of the playing field that America stands for?

We will not tax you below $10 million, that’s Elizabeth Warren. After $10 million, we need to tax the crap out of you because we’ve got to get stuff done over here because you guys aren’t going to do it. You know what? That’s the way this country works, is that you made your money and you figured out how to use the system to make it and you’re sitting with the first $10 million dollars a year on positive income. The rest of it, we need it for donation. We’re going to lift other people out of poverty. We’re going to lift other people out and give them and restore the middle class so we can do some things that we need to do for a country, rebuild America from the inside out. You’re going like, “Bill, how did you get to be so political? I’m centering my message here inside myself versus saying, “Here’s what I’m going to promise to do.” I’m not promising, I’m going to set the vision.

It’s all about the vision and how that’s communicated. Compassion and empathy don’t hurt either.

The hag has a little bit of compassion and empathy, “These are small tasks.” It’s like, “Where’re the small tasks?” Let’s get around to that next time. Our readers will enjoy how people’s brain falls asleep, especially through the eyes of our hero in this mythic. It’ll make a big difference

I look forward to it, Bill. Thanks.

Thanks, Tom. Talk to you soon.

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